Synthetic Biology

The engineering of living systems: designing genetic circuits, proteins and organisms to sense, compute and produce. Reading and writing DNA are now cheap; reliably designing what a sequence will do is the open problem.

Biology is the only manufacturing technology that self-replicates and self-repairs. Making it designable would transform medicine, materials, food and energy — and raise serious biosecurity questions.

Engineered cell therapies are approved for some cancers. AI-designed proteins are entering the laboratory routinely. Genetic circuits work in constrained settings. The design gap — predicting behaviour in context — is closing slowly.

Protein-design groups

Machine-learning models for structure and function.

Cell-therapy companies

Engineered immune cells and beyond.

Biosecurity researchers

Screening synthesis orders; dual-use governance.

1. 2000

   First synthetic genetic circuits

2. 2021

   Deep learning predicts protein structure at near-experimental accuracy

• In production

  Neurazine essay: Synthetic Biology's Design Problem

  Issue 002.

DNA synthesis and sequencing; generative protein and sequence models; high-throughput screening; genome editing.

• Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold, Nature (2021)

1. 01Can behaviour in context be predicted?
2. 02How is dual-use risk governed as design gets easier?
3. 03Which applications reach patients first?

AI has become a first-class instrument of biological design.

Sequence-to-function model accuracy, cell-therapy results in solid tumours, and synthesis-screening policy.